This week, amid widespread Democratic tumult regarding the selection of a replacement for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, alleged comedian Michelle Wolf paid tribute to the most important facet of American life: abortion. On her Netflix show...

But more importantly, a ground shift has taken place in how Democrats think about abortion. Back in 2005, I wrote that the Democratic “safe, legal and rare” formulation regarding abortion was logically and morally untenable: If Democrats wanted abortion to be rare thanks to its inherent immorality, there was no reason for it to be legal. Democrats have finally come around: They’re now “shouting” their abortions, proclaiming them from the rooftops, suggesting that there is a moral good achieved by abortion.

Yes, abortion is now a signifier that you refuse to be ruled by the patriarchy. Avoidance of pregnancy may be a wise life choice, according to third-wave feminists, preventing women from being sucked into the grinding maw of maternal life. But abortion is something even better: a signal that you just don’t care about the system. The system demands that if you’re pregnant with a child, you make your own concerns secondary; the system must be fought.

She’s an acquaintance of my family, a law school classmate of my father (also an elderly “liberal” federal judge, appointed by George H.W. Bush), and a woman deserving of respect for her achievements, even if we have significant reservations about her politics (whatever they may be).

Your quoting from my post (“deserving of respect for her achievements”), and coupling that, in the same post, with an account of some comic getting a tattoo, made it appear (perhaps wrongly) to me that you were linking those two things.

Your quoting from my post (“deserving of respect for her achievements”), and coupling that, in the same post, with an account of some comic getting a tattoo, made it appear (perhaps wrongly) to me that you were linking those two things.